


Greyscale

by Jaelijn



Series: Symmetry of Souls [4]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Character Study, Drama, M/M, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29042643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: Tarrant doesn't understand Avon's relationship with Vila.A Soulmate AU told in canon compliant timestamps from Dawn of the Gods to PGP.
Relationships: Kerr Avon/Vila Restal
Series: Symmetry of Souls [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758451
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	Greyscale

**Author's Note:**

> A short one, and a somewhat bitter one as it is 90% canon compliant - but you weren't expecting all of these soulmate fics to be fluffy, were you? ;) Enjoy!

The entire flight deck seemed to hold its breath when Vila’s panicked voice came through the comms and then was cut off sharply.

Tarrant jumped into action – getting rid of the threat – and tried not to think that they had sent Vila to his death. He might be an ill-fitting element that drove Tarrant to distraction, but he was a member of the crew nonetheless.

“What the hell was that?” Dayna exclaimed.

“Whatever it was, it knocked out our scanner.”

“Backup scanners activated,” intoned Zen.

“It didn’t like its taste of our neutron blaster,” Avon said, his voice curiously flat. Cally was staring hard at him, for no reason that Tarrant could discern – but then Cally had been behaving oddly ever since this thing had started.

“It had a sort of claw,” Dayna went on, earning herself one of Avon’s half-nods.

“Designed to tear things apart. Space craft, for example.”

“Bio-scanners indicate presence of humanoid life form in the vicinity of the ship,” Zen announced suddenly, and Tarrant was forcefully wrenched back to the reality. They’d lost one of their own.

“I’ll go and fetch him,” he offered, uselessly. “We can deep freeze his body until we’re back into space–”

“He isn’t dead, Tarrant,” Avon said quietly. “But yes, you better fetch him.”

“What do you mean, he isn’t dead?! His spacesuit was losing air! You know as well as I do that it’s a matter of seconds…”

Avon fixed him with a hard stare. “He isn’t dead.” He leant over to the comms and activated a channel. “Vila. Quit toying with Tarrant. You know you can’t fool me.”

The still figure on the screen miraculously stirred and sat up. “You’re no fun, Avon.”

“It wasn’t interested in you, _this time_. Now get back to the ship.” Avon gestured towards Tarrant. “Tarrant, meet him at the airlock.”

“Orac was absolutely right,” Vila mused over the open comm while Tarrant, his mind reeling, made his way down to the airlock, “when he said that space had ceased to exist outside the ship. This place has a breathable atmosphere.”

“And some nasty wildlife. Now _get back to the ship_ ,” was Avon’s only reply.

Between being captured by the Thaarn and escaping from a black hole, the incident slipped from Tarrant’s mind.

* * *

The memory of it was back, full force, when he was trying to withstand Avon’s glower after Vila had teleported down in exchange for the weaponry crystals.

“Now he hasn’t even got a bracelet.”

“And that’s my fault?” Tarrant protested, all the while knowing that he sounded petulant.

“So we haven’t got Vila and we haven’t got the crystals. What’s our next brilliant move?” Dayna, at least, wasn’t shouting at him. Yet.

She was ignored, however. Cally was looking at Avon as intensely as Avon was keeping his gaze on Tarrant. “Is he alive?” Cally asked.

And Avon answered, “Yes,” without ever looking away from Tarrant.

“Not that I’m not relieved to hear that, but how can you possibly know that!”

“I know,” Avon said simply, as if that were any sort of explanation. “As for what we are going to do, we persuade his simple unaggressive friends to part with either or both.”

Tarrant had never known Avon to express such certainty without being _certain_. He couldn’t for the life of him understand why Cally thought Avon would know – why Avon thought he knew. Still, there were things to be done. “ _We_ don’t; I do. Only this time I’ll negotiate with a gun in my hand.”

Avon dismissed him with a glance. “Orac, can you give me a precise fix on that tracer?”

“Of course I can.”

“Where is it then?”

“Under the box which is ten centimetres from your right hand.”

Avon lifted the device and plucked the tracer from the surface of the teleport console. For a moment, he looked almost surprised. “The stupid idiot.”

“He palmed it.” Cally.

“That’s not stupid, it’s suicidal!” Dayna – and she really needn’t have put it quite so graphically.

“He’s _alive_ ,” Avon said again, with curious intense emphasis.

“But why would he do that?”

“Because he was scared witless,” Tarrant explained. “He didn’t trust anyone. You were right. I’m sorry, Cally.”

“He’s alive – we shall have to make sure it remains that way. You’re the only one who’s met these people. Where do you think they’ve taken him?”

* * *

Vila, it turned out, was in fact alive, and little worse for wear. Tarrant waited until they had all been back on the _Liberator_ for a few hours and Avon was busy evaluating the weaponry crystals. He wanted to confront Avon – make him admit that his supposed certainty of Vila’s living was nonsense, far removed from the vaulted heights of logic Avon claimed to be operating from. He felt like he owed everyone an apology, but the urge to recover _some_ ground was strong, and he felt that this was the way to do it.

Until he saw that Avon wasn’t even using a colour attachment. “What do you think you’re doing!” Tarrant exclaimed before he could think better of it.

Avon’s eyebrow raised a little but he didn’t look up. “Evaluating the crystals Vila managed to steal for us.”

“Without a colour adjuster? Come now, Avon, no matter how much of a genius you may claim to be, you cannot evaluate these crystals without–”

“I have perfect colour vision, Tarrant.”

Tarrant floundered. “I’m sorry? But that means…”

“You’ll work it out eventually,” Avon drawled, lifting one of the crystals out of the evaluator and slotting in another.

“ _You_? You have a soulmate?”

“You needn’t sound quite so surprised.”

“But that means they’d have to be on board!” Tarrant stared at the other man for a moment longer, unwilling to believe what his mind was telling him had to be the truth. “ _Vila?_ Vila is your soulmate?”

“I would congratulate you on your deduction, but it really took you embarrassingly long to notice.”

“But you… you admitted that you despised him! You agreed! So you lied to me?”

“Not at all,” Avon replied calmly, the evaluator forgotten for the moment. “I simply saw no reason to disabuse you of that notion.”

“But he’s your soulmate!” 

“I am very aware.”

“You can’t hate him!”

“Can’t I?” Avon answered cryptically, adjusting the crystal minutely in the housing. “These feelings are not mutually exclusive, Tarrant. I’m sure there must be mixed feelings about yourself somewhere under that head of curls – unless you really are that naïve.”

Tarrant bristled, but chose not to rise to the bait. “So he’s your soulmate. Good to know.”

“Don’t imagine that it changes anything. Vila has been my soulmate for a lot longer than we’ve known you, Tarrant.”

“Oh yes. I understand.”

* * *

But he didn’t, not really. Not through maintaining a five-day teleport alert during which the only thing Vila would say to all of them was “He’s alive.” Not through the shivering cold on Terminal, when he watched bitter grief and profound relief warring for dominance on both Avon and Vila’s faces. Not when, after Malodaar, _something_ had gone cold and sharp between them.

He really only understood when he bent over an unconscious Vila, trying to revive the man in the rubble of a base on Gauda Prime, and Vila opened his eyes – and immediate gave a cry of soul-wrenching anguish.

“No!”

“Vila! Calm down, you’ll alert the remaining guards.”

Vila fought his hold, scratching and pushing and flailing. “Let me go! You don’t understand! He’s dead! He’s _dead_!”

It was only then that Tarrant realised what it meant for them when their world was as grey as Tarrant’s. 


End file.
